Dark Watch

We watch your city of light from our city of darkness. You live your commercial, inconsequential, sometimes happy lives with no clue that we breathe the same air as you. We live for the moments when we see one of you alone. One whose bowed back is no longer equal to the toil your city demands, or who sighs through a window showing them something they can never be part of but will always see.

We’re not interested in the ones who flock to the park you give them, where they take a moment’s solace in its flowers and ponds before returning to carry the burden of your city. We’re interested in those you leave behind. Those who already have one foot in our dark.

Seeing one of them is the only thing that will draw us into your light. We stride out beneath your sneering spires and your chimneys gloating with smoke from the fires keeping you warm. We keep our eyes on your streets worn smooth with poorly shod feet until we stand beside the one we came for.

We say nothing, but we are patient. Even in the light, you don’t see us. You think we are more of those you have discarded. Sometimes, all the time your blindness grants us is never enough. Sometimes, the one who drew us out walks away, determined to remain part of your city that doesn’t want them. We watch them go and return to our dark. We have no use for those who do not want us.

Sometimes they look at us and recognise brothers and sisters. They nod. Then there is one more of us watching you from the dark. Watching you walking your sunlit streets, smelling your roses, lying naked in your beds.

Enjoy your days of good food and good wine; you number your own days with every one of yourselves you leave behind. Soon you will have left us so many that our city will no longer be of the dark.

And when ours is the city of light, what will you have when you no longer have your days?